Mars One mission to colonise red planet won't succeed: MIT researchers

Washington: MIT researchers have analysed Mars One’s plan to create a human colony on the Red Planet by 2025 and found that the settlers may face deadly problems, including suffocation and starvation. In 2012, Dutch nonprofit organisation Mars One announced its ambitious plans to send four people on a one-way trip to Mars, where they would spend the rest of their lives building the first permanent human settlement. So far, 705 aspirants, including 44 Indians, have been shortlisted for the one-way trip to Mars. It’s a bold vision - particularly since Mars One claims that the entire mission can be built upon technologies that already exist. [caption id=“attachment_1208913” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Mars: Reuters[/caption] But engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the project may have to take a step back, at least to reconsider the mission’s technical feasibility. They found that new technologies will be needed to keep humans alive on Mars. Simulating the day-to-day life of a Mars colonist, researchers found that producing enough of the crops such as beans, peanuts, potatoes and rice to sustain astronauts over the long term would require about 200 square meters of growing area, compared with Mars One’s estimate of 50 square meters. PTI